Wednesday, July 31, 2013

I have a small work in The String and The Mirror, which opens at Lisa Cooley tomorrow night, at 6pm. Curated by Lawrence Kumpf and Justin Luke, the show features conceptual soundworks by Alan Licht, Christof Migone, Rolf Julius, Ultra Red, Marin Rosenfeld, Akio Suzuki and others.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Arrived in the mail today: a long-coveted book sculpture by Michael Dumontier. These are found books (each unique) that the artist has foil stamped with the same text, turning them into landscape drawings. A few are available, for $150, from here and here.

Launched yesterday in conjunction with a solo exhibition, Housewarming Gifts for Anorexics, at Narwhal Projects at 2988 Dundas Street West, Toronto. The exhibition runs until Aug 17th, and the jewelry multiples can be purchased there, or by contacting info@narwhalprojects.com.

Each of the ten members of the group will present for five minutes, followed by discussion. Admission is free for members and $10 otherwise. Call the Harbourfront Centre Box Office at 416.973.4000 or click below to purchase tickets. Members can reserve their free tickets by contacting Jennifer Simaitis, Membership Coordinator, at 416.973.4926 or jsimaitis@thepowerplant.org.

"Since 2009, a group of local conceptual artists, writers, curators, and others interested in artists’ books have gathered as “Book Club.” Members of the group will hold their second public gathering in conjunction with the exhibition Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art. Reflecting on everything from the distinctive formal qualities of books to the history of the medium and the interrelationships among literature, language, text and print in art, Book Clubbers will discuss the rich legacy of artists’ books in a show-and-tell-style with examples from their private treasure troves of artists’ books. The public is invited to join the members of Book Club: Bill Clarke, Dave Dyment, Wendy Gomoll, Michael Klein, Micah Lexier, Derek McCormack, Roula Partheniou, Sarah Robayo Sheridan, Derek Sullivan, and Paul Van Kooy."

- Power Plant press release

For more information about Bookclub, see Jason McBride's 2011 article for the Toronto Standard, here. For more or less the same information as above, visit the Power Plant's website, here.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Putting together a list of things to try to see next weekend in NYC and came across this Artforum piece on Afrika Bambaataa’s record collection at Gavin Brown. En route to Cornell University’s Hip Hop Collection, where it is being donated this fall, the collection is open to the public like an archeological dig, with guest DJs making selections and crowd sourced alphabetization. It's open Monday to Friday from noon to 5pm until August 10th.

Here's Bambaataa’s Metal, a Gary Numan cover with some Debbie Harry thrown in for good measure:

Previously available as a cardboard multiple, the Geometric Mouse will soon be released as an aluminum sculptural edition, from Gemini G.E.L., who have a relationship with Oldenburg that dates back to the mid-sixties.

For other editions by Gemini G.E.L. visit their site here or stay here.

From Artists & Photographs, a cardboard box containing six artist’s publications, four multiples, eight artist’s books, one poster and an exhibition catalogue, published by Multiples Inc in an edition of 1200 copies. In addition to Bochner, the box included work by Christo, Jan Dibbets, Dan Graham, Joseph Kosuth, Richard Long, Robert Morris, B. Nauman, Andy Warhol and many others.

“When I realized in 1967, that my work had become about photography without wanting it to – I thought, I should do some research, look into the history of the medium and find out what’s been written about it, what the issues are.” What I found was really pretty dumb – it had no value in any theoretical terms. And the more I read, the more I began to see it all as a colossal misunderstanding. So I started compiling a set of misunderstandings. After a while I had quite a large number of these quotations which I wanted to publish. The first title was “Dead Ends and Vicious Circles”… I submitted it to Artforum but Philip Leader said ‘we’re not a goddamn photography magazine, this is an art magazine, don’t give me anything on photography, we don’t do photography!’ Then I sent it to Art in America and they were not interested either, but suggested that I send it to a photography magazine! Like Popular Photography! Well I knew that no photography magazine could possibly be interested in this, so I put it in a drawer and forgot about it. Then in 1970, Marian Goodman, who then had a gallery called Multiples Gallery, came up with the idea of doing a boxed multiple set of artists’ photographs. She made this box which was quite an amazing thing, it had Smithson, Graham, Ruscha, Dibbets, Rauschenberg, LeWitt, myself and a number of other artists. My contribution was a version of Dead Ends and Vicious Circles, a compilation of quotations I titled “Misunderstandings (A Theory of Photography).” And to further add to the confusion, three of the quotes were fakes, I made them up. The last card in the envelope is a reproduction of a negative of a Polaroid, but of course Polaroids don’t have negatives!”

Dedicated to Artists’ books, multiples, recordings, postcards, magazines and ephemera, this site will feature reviews of recent titles, features on artists and publishers, random listings of older works, the occasional longer essay or interview, straight-forward pictorials,links to recent news, etc. etc., in an attempt to create an aggregate of information on editioned artworks.

About Me

Dave Dyment is an artist, writer and curator based in Toronto, Canada. He is the co-editor of "One for Me and One to Share: Artists Multiples and Editions" (YYZ Books, 2012). His own work can be viewed at www.dave-dyment.com. He is represented by MKG127.